Holy - it's been too long since I blogged!!

I tend to put in a lot of hours at work - this week's adventure included back to back 11-12 hour days. I could barely drag myself out of bed this morning, but unfortunately, I'm a dedicated, hard-working employee of HarborOne Credit Union - and so off to work I went early this morning.

I got home and we went to Providence Place Mall in Providence, RI. I wanted to go to Lush - a store that sells all handmade cosmetics. I spent about $40.00 on stuff for my face, much to my husband's dismay. When my parents came to visit, my mom had brought me some shampoo and conditioner (which I love - thanks mom!!!) and coincidentally, this week, Lush made news this week by staging a protest against the overpackaging of products - they had their employees spend a day wearing just an apron with signs that said, "ask me why I'm naked". The employees in the store up here in Natick, MA ended up having to wear underwear (by order of the Natick police) but I guess the Providence group go to go completely commando under the aprons. Love how green they are and are encouraging the world to be...they have even invented solid shampoo so that it doesn't need to be packaged in plastic bottles.

We came home, did some laundry and then Dylan and Adam went outside to practice a little hockey...I took these:

In this photo - most everything is in focus - except for the end of Dylan's stick and his feet - those things were moving. He was in the middle of spinning around after scoring against Adam when I shot this. I know that I wasn't moving for 2 reasons - I was using a tripod and most of my subject is in focus.
I PSE6'ed this photo - I vignetted it - which I'm thinking is my most favorite thing in the world to do with my pictures. I also blurred Adam and the rest of the background from Dylan who was completely in focus...

I love this guy - I just cropped vignetted him - he actually posed for this picture which is a rarity all in itself - I think he was just trying to be nice to me after I felt guilty for buying facial products today. We don't ever fight about is money but I have a major guilty complex about buying things for myself - except of course if it is for scrapbooking or photography...

I took all of the above pictures with my Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 - it's a good mid-range lens. This was a birthday gift from mom and dad. I'm hoping someone else (check out the guy in the picture above) will get me the new Tamron 28-300mm f/3.5 for Christmas...I'm not sure how much it is but I'm sure it's probably expensive - (I just checked - $399.99 - not as bad as I thought). If I get this someday, I'll have to sell my Canon 75-300mm - just because I won't need it anymore...sigh, someday....

After a couple more hockey shots, the girls wanted to get in on the photo action:

I hate hard candy - this is Angelica sucking on a baby bottle pop...yuck - I know, she needs a haircut.

Melody couldn't keep still enough for a decent shot this time - so I moved onto the mums that my "Mum" got us...when she sees this blog, she's gonna kill me for not yet planting them - Mom, get mad at Adam, I don't plant - he's the gardener around here.


These 2 photos were taken at 7:00pm in macro mode (denoted on most cameras by a flower) - Macro is one of the auto modes - you don't get to pick the aperture, ISO, shutter speed or whether or not to use a flash - all these things get determined by the camera.

These 2 photos were shot moments later in AV mode without the flash. To my own surprise, I like both the flash and nonflash versions. I haven't flashed anything in a while - pictures, I mean.

I'm off to do - what else? - clean my scrap room - it's like the neverending abyss of sorting that needs to happen...my scrap-a-rrifc friends know what I'm talking about - hope to take more pictures tomorrow...Dylan's skating tomorrow - I'll bring my tripod, make some adjustments and hopefully get some good shots. We'll see....